


As You're There

by Anonymous



Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: Brotherhood, Fear, Gen, Introspection, Loyalty
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-17
Updated: 2019-06-17
Packaged: 2020-05-13 17:15:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19255618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: The Inseparables face the potentiality of separation. Hope takes its toll.





	As You're There

With the rope-coiled handle chaffing at his palm, Athos switched the dangling bucket from one hand to the other, then took a moment to stand before the dark wooden door and breathe. 

Just breathe.

The distance he’d covered was not especially great, but his hand was neatly cramped from the weight of the water pail. Flexing, he felt the blood stretch through his fingers, feeding the muscles. 

In a gesture that felt artless and strange, he rested the flat of that same hand on the surface of the door and closed his eyes.

Deprived of sight, he could hear the far-off patter of rain more acutely. The fresh scent of grass and earth brushed his nostrils. He felt his mouth open and his lungs expand, like they hadn't done in days.

Though the three of them were sequestered in the darkest, most isolated hallway in the monastery, the corridor without the room he was about to return to was an open, illusionary space. Warm with the glow of candles yet cool enough for his lungs to savor the air—the open arches heralding a glimpse of the distant gardens.

Standing there in the quiet, the unbothered atmosphere enticed him with a strange and alluring emotion.

Hope.

An incongruous sensation, at odds with his thoughts. It sunk deep through his sleep-deprived mind, like a metaphorical representation of the drunk and clumsy way Aramis had once tried to describe his most ardent views on prayer.

 _Hope, Athos_ , he’d slurred, before dropping his head onto folded arms and rambling into the leather of his sleeves. _Prayer ought to be a space where we might reach for peace and benevolence and the hope to become better and stronger than we are...._

Athos couldn’t even remember what they’d been drunk about. He only remembered it had been _they_ —the two of them. That Porthos, amused and jovial in his task, had been the one to carry them home upon finding them.

_Porthos._

The cool sensation of spring rain rushed into Athos’s chest again. He clenched his jaw to hold it, uncertain whether to curse or bless it.

In the end, he did neither—he'd long had little faith in his own prayers. 

Finally twisting the doorknob, he returned his chafed palm to the facing and pushed, opening the door as silently as he could. Who he thought he'd wake, he wasn't sure.

Across the room in the flickering light, Aramis was bowed forward—elbows on knees, fingers engaged in the studious endeavor of rumpling his hair. For all the fidgeting, he looked oddly motionless. A creature carved in stone and set by Porthos’s side to mark his sickbed, like an aging Byzantine statue.

He didn’t look up upon Athos’s return. Didn't frown, or cough, or speak.

On quiet feet, Athos crossed over to him.

Despite taking care, some of the water sloshed up the side of the pail, dribbling onto the bedside table as he set it in its place. When he looked down to see if it'd disturbed their patient, Porthos’s eyes were closed and twitching, his body visibly strained, all the way down to where it disappeared beneath the damp sheets bunched at his waist.

Three days, and the fever only seemed to be getting worse.

Feeling the crease catch in his brow line, Athos schooled his features into something approximating the calm of leadership.

Not that it mattered.

Porthos could not see him, and Aramis…

Swallowing heavily, Athos glanced at the head of wild hair bowed next to him and set his palm to Aramis’s shoulder. To his surprise, his palm trembled as it made contact, bringing Aramis’s dark eyes up to his immediately. The statue coming to life in a way Athos had not intended.

It was at that point he realized he was the source of the trembling, not Aramis, and it was not only his hand that was shaking.

“No,” he said quickly, pressing his fingers into the worried tension of Aramis’s shoulder. He didn’t know why he didn’t just let go, or draw back, particularly when the trembling didn’t stop. “No, Aramis, I’m not… it isn’t…” 

Using his other hand to pinch the grit from his eyes, he shook himself and sank down to the bed at Porthos’s hip, finally forcing himself to let go of Aramis’s sleeve.

Aramis reached back as though on reflex, circling Athos’s wrist and squeezing. His breathing had gone shallow, and Athos could feel the pressure of his gaze.

“It’s nothing,” he tried to reassure again, uncovering his eyes and holding his free hand out from his face to stare at the subtle vibrations. “Only too little sleep, I believe.” He met Aramis’s stare openly and shrugged. “And too little… too little drink.” 

Aramis blinked slowly and Athos looked away, folding his hand into a fist. It wasn’t often he felt ashamed of his vice—too used to abandoning himself to its will. Too used to his brothers’ tolerance and the way it muted the demons in his mind. 

When he looked back, Aramis’s face hadn’t changed. The worry etched deep. Eyes troubled and black.

“How is he?” Athos redirected.

Aramis’s hand flexed over Athos’s wrist convulsively. His gaze ticked to Porthos’s gray face, then back down at the floorboards, leaving Athos to stare at the crown of his head. Dark, wild hair that was tangled in complicated, defiant twists from the worry of his hands and his own exhaustion. The scar at the hairline of his temple looked raw from rubbing. An unconscious and bad habit Aramis fell into when he was sleep-deprived and bothered.

“Aramis?" Athos watched him swallow. "Speak.” 

“No change.” Aramis’s voice was tightly controlled, but as audible as Athos needed.

Perhaps for hearing the stress in it, or perhaps for no reason at all, Porthos flinched, releasing a thready sound.

Aramis reacted immediately, soothing a hand down Porthos’s leg. Athos rose to wet a new cloth, handing it to Aramis before folding another over Porthos’s paling eyes. 

"The monks were singing earlier," Aramis said, once Porthos had quieted again. "I could hear them on the floor above, through the walls… and the ceiling."

Athos nodded, eyeing the roof in reflection of the entire building's fine acoustics.

" _In Paradisum_ ," Aramis continued. "A song of mourning. They expect him to die."

A lump rose to Athos's throat. "I didn't hear them."

"You were asleep."

It was not an accusation, but it felt like one. Like Porthos could have slipped away while Athos wasn't looking. And what would he have done then? "They don't know him like we do," he returned, but it sounded hollow.

Aramis looked up, meeting his eyes, wan face pinched. "I would have woken you," he said. "Athos, I would not have let…" He trailed off, seeming to realize the reality and nature of their discussion and unwilling to add further voice to it. He looked down, and for a long time, his head stayed bowed.

Crossing the room, Athos moved the small bench from the short desk near the wall, and sank until their knees touched, sitting parallel. A powerless vigil. Too much space for thought.

Before them, Porthos's chest rose and fell. Rose, and fell again. “He’s quieter than before,” he remarked. He wanted it to be a good thing and knew that it wasn't. 

"Perhaps the monks are right," Aramis whispered after an empty pause. "Perhaps we should allow Last Rites. Perhaps we are… or no... I… perhaps I am selfish."

Athos turned, watching the pain flicker through Aramis's eyes as he stared at the wall. Touching Porthos's wrist, rubbing a thumb over the strained skin, he swallowed to keep his own suddenly rough voice under control. "If God would take him in this fashion, should we not be allowed hope until the end?"

Aramis slid his gaze sideways, grateful and fearful, as though surprised to hear this coming from Athos, of all people.

"You trust your God," he continued. "Oft times enough for all of us. Do you not?"

Aramis cleared his throat, but the next words cracked as he spoke them. "Be it blasphemy to speak it, Athos, but Death… Death takes many it shouldn’t, and frees those who should have been taken subject long ago, and I have never made sense of it." Once more, his hand drifted up to his scar, worrying over it with brittle fingertips.

Catching them in his own, Athos pulled before Aramis could tug too tightly at the hairs surrounding it and make it bleed. "Be glad Porthos is not awake to hear you speaking that way." 

As though in response, Porthos rocked his head, groaning weakly.

It was a true enough thing, Athos thought. Despite the tragedy, Porthos considered Aramis's survival from those condemned woods to be a miracle.

While Aramis… Aramis never could.

Letting go of his fingers, Athos let the matter be, returning instead to watch their brother's twitching face. "He's dreaming again."

"Perhaps a nightmare."

"Perhaps not." And when had he become the counterpoint for faith? 

"No. No, perhaps not," Aramis agreed quietly, glancing around the space. "This is my nightmare, I think. Not his." He looked at Athos before curving his spine, elbows digging into knees, hands threading back into his hair. "Perhaps yours also."

"Perhaps."

 _Perhaps_. Slowly, an undeniable tightness was building in Athos's chest. He closed his eyes and drew a breath of stale air.

The strange, alluring sense of hope he'd felt sink through him in the hallway felt trifling and distant.

Porthos's labored breathing was growing louder and louder in his ears. Louder and slower.

Athos exhaled, while fear coiled and settled into his stomach. Fear he'd never felt with sword and pistol and overwhelming odds.

Death was always at their door—never far from consideration, they lived so close to it.

It was a peculiar thing, this. That it should feel so different.

He had always imagined their end would come on a battlefield, an eventuality Aramis joked about often and with disregard. An attitude to which there'd been no objection, or offense. Death was inevitable. Athos had pictured it himself—sometimes dreamed it—and had occasionally wondered what would be if it were only one of them lost to the fight. More often than not, he imagined the remaining two would inevitably end up scattered to the winds, crumpled and untied, even from each other.

A thought that now felt untenable, and like a betrayal of the man on the bed.

And if— _Please, no, but dear God_ , _if_ —

Splaying a hand over the curve of Aramis's back and leaving it there, Athos resolved, come what may, to keep Aramis with him.

Poor keeper though he might be.

Steadily, he took a breath.

Under his touch, Aramis shuddered. 

Fisting his hand into the back of Aramis's shirt, he gripped tightly. 

Through the ceiling, he could hear it now. The monks were singing.

_In Paradisum._

A song of mourning.

-x-

tbc


End file.
